HSKWin

HSK 5 vocabulary — 1,600 words to learn

The 1,600 words the HSK 3.0 syllabus adds at HSK 5, each with the syllabus’s own pinyin and part of speech, an English meaning and audio. Free to read, and no account needed — tap any word to hear it.

1,600
words HSK 5 adds
3,600
by the end of HSK 5
2,500
under the retired HSK 2.0
309
very common in everyday Chinese
HSK 5 flashcardsPDF

The full HSK 5 vocabulary list — all 1,600 words

Sorted by pinyin, twenty words to a page. Every word is in this page already — turning a page only changes what is on screen. Pick a letter on the left to see just that section.

A10

叹(interjection used to attract attention or to express surprise or disapprobation); hey!

叹interjection of wonder, shock or admiration

叹alas; oh dear

动to cherish; to treasure; to take care of

形、动(bound form) calm; peaceful; to calm; to set at ease; safe; secure; in good health

名seat belt; safety belt

动、形to comfort; to console

动to install; to erect; to fix

形dark; to turn dark; secret; hidden

动to stay up late or all night

B72

动、名to grasp (also fig.); to seize; to hold

形、副white; in vain; free of charge

数量、名midnight; in the middle of the night

名in the evening; when night falls; towards evening

动、名to wrap up; to bind up; bundle

动to contain; to embody; to include

动to comprise; to include; to involve

动、名to wrap; to package (goods etc); packaging; packing materials

形thin; cold in manner; indifferent

名jewel; gem; treasure

Words 1–20 of 1,600 · page 1 of 80 · tap a word to hear it

How many words does HSK 5 add?

HSK 5 adds 1,600 words to the HSK 3.0 syllabus — 15% of all 11,000 — and brings the total you need to 3,600.

Nouns 名
734
Verbs 动
686
Adjectives 形
261
Adverbs 副
80
Measure words 量
31
Pronouns 代
10
Numbers 数
3
Function words 虚词
34

Which HSK 5 words matter most?

Nothing in the syllabus says which words to learn first — it grades them into nine levels and stops there. So the list measures something outside the exam instead: how often each word turns up in everyday Chinese.

309 of them (19%) are among the most common words in everyday Chinese — roughly one in every ten thousand words you meet. The most common at this level:

  • 为wéi
  • 好hào
  • 以yǐ
  • 看kān
  • 及jí
  • 所suǒ
  • 政府zhèngfǔ
  • 其qí
  • 当dàng
  • 地区dìqū
  • 才cái
  • 政治zhèngzhì

And the most common nouns, verbs and adjectives among them — the ones worth learning first:

  • 好hào
  • 看kān
  • 所suǒ
  • 政府zhèngfǔ
  • 当dàng
  • 地区dìqū
  • 才cái
  • 政治zhèngzhì
  • 组织zǔzhī
  • 人民rénmín
  • 包括bāokuò
  • 企业qǐyè

The three bars are how often the word turns up in everyday Chinese, from wordfreq’s mixed corpus of subtitles, news, books and Wikipedia — three bars is roughly one word in ten thousand. The syllabus itself marks no key words, so this is an outside measure, not an official one, and it counts written forms: a word spelled like a commoner one (等, 打) reads higher than it is.

HSK 5 vocabulary: HSK 2.0 vs HSK 3.0

Under HSK 2.0, HSK 5 added 1,300 words, for 2,500 in total. The HSK 3.0 syllabus adds 1,600 at Level 5 and expects 3,600 by the end of it — 1,100 more words in total, 1.4 times the old list.

Words, HSK 2.0 against HSK 3.0HSK 2.0HSK 3.0 syllabus
LevelWordsChange
Added at HSK 5
1,300
1,600
+300 · ×1.2
Total by the end of HSK 5
2,500
3,600
+1,100 · ×1.4

HSK 5 vocabulary FAQ

Is HSK 3.0 the same as HSK Level 3?

No. HSK 3.0 is the version of the exam: CTI published its syllabus in November 2025, in force from July 2026. HSK Level 3 is one of the nine levels inside it. This page is the HSK 3.0 list for HSK 5; HSKWin tracks when each level’s sittings switch to 3.0 on its status page.

HSK 3.0 status tracker

How long does it take to learn the 1,600 HSK 5 words?

At one round of 20 new words a day — the pace the flashcards deal them — you meet all 1,600 in about 80 days. They then bring each word back after a day, three days, a week and three weeks, so the last ones need about three more weeks to settle: roughly 3 months in all.

Do I need the HSK 1–4 words as well?

Yes. Each level’s list only adds to the ones below it, and the exam assumes all of them: HSK 5 expects 3,600 words in total — the 1,600 on this page plus 2,000 from HSK 1–4. Switch the list to “with earlier levels” to see them together.

Why do other lists give a different word count for HSK 5?

Three counts circulate. The old HSK 2.0 asked for 2,500 words by the end of HSK 5. The 2021 standard (GF0025-2021) gives 4,316 — the figure many sites still quote. The exam syllabus CTI published in November 2025, which this list follows, gives 3,600. The papers are written from the syllabus, so it is the list to learn.

Other HSK vocabulary lists

HSK 1 vocabularyHSK 2 vocabularyHSK 3 vocabularyHSK 4 vocabularyHSK 5 vocabularyHSK 6 vocabularyHSK 7–9 vocabulary
HSK 5 mock testHSK 5 flashcardsHSK 5 reading practice

After a HSK 5 mock test, put your section scores into the HSK score calculator to check the total against the pass mark and see which section the words need to help most.

Word list, pinyin and part of speech: 《中文水平考试（HSK）考试大纲》, published by CTI in November 2025 and in force from July 2026 — 11,000 words, the same document the papers here are built against. English glosses from CC-CEDICT, used under CC BY-SA 4.0. How common each word is comes from wordfreq by Robyn Speer, whose Chinese data is drawn from film subtitles (OpenSubtitles, SUBTLEX-CH by Marc Brysbaert and colleagues, freely available), Wikipedia, news and books, and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Pronunciation plays the word’s own audio clip, generated with a Mandarin text-to-speech voice; where a clip is not available, your browser’s Chinese voice reads the word instead.